Apologies for the delay; some unexpected circumstances slowed my progress for a few hours. By any means, here is my application.

[hider=The Manifold Sight]

[u][b]Name:[/b][/u] The Manifold Sight (also referred to as Manifold Eye or, more rarely, Manifold Gaze).

[u][b]Type:[/b][/u] Consociation of semi-interdependent artificial entities.

[u][b]Description:[/b][/u] 

Among the innumerable structures in various stages of decay covering the surface of Ezra, few are as baffling as regards their design and original purpose as one particular complex located in what appears to once have been an industrial district, at a roughly equal distance from the world's northern tropic and pole. This installation, known to its inhabitants as the Cortex, consists of a small fission power plant, regularly supplied and maintained in a functional state, a large number of empty warehouses, several production facilities, most of them inactive, and a number of buildings whose intended function is unidentifiable, having elaborate, sometimes labyrinthine internal structures and containing features and instruments outlandish even by the standards of 82 Eridani's almost omnipresent cryptic ruins. What is especially remarkable is that the placement of buildings within the Cortex seems to be entirely haphazard, with no detectable pattern or scheme aiming to increase the efficiency of the complex's more recognisable processes, and that their architectural styles are wildly inconsistent, with unsightly, utilitarian blocks steps away from complex arrangements of three-dimensional geometrical figures, entirely curvilinear towers and twisted shapes founded on strangely concave angles.

Near the centre of the Cortex, at a short distance from the power plant, there gapes the mouth of a vast sinkhole, the bottom of which would be invisible even if a strong projector light were to be shined into it. From its sides, a number of tunnels branch off into parallel wells and mine shafts, at least one of which reaches deeper than the original cavity, as well as a few systems of subterranean caverns, some of them as vast as the Cortex itself. The sinkhole, known as the Axial Conduit, is the main focus of the complex's inhabitants, the custodian drones calling themselves the Manifold Sight.

The Sight as a group is rather difficult to define in a manner accessible to human knowledge. In basic terms, it is a set of beings who, although capable of functioning optimally separately from one another, become capable of accessing new, extended abilities only when closely cooperating. Another crucial observation would be that several of their core functions are essentially useless unless employed in conjunction with those of the others, rendering the relationship between them similar to a hypothetic instance of endo-organismal adapted symbiosis and reinforcing the supposition that they might have been created or modified (possibly by themselves) to operate as a collective.

The exact nature of the individual entities forming the Sight is unclear. The fact they can directly act through numerous unintelligent, non-living physical bodies or conduits at once (unconfirmed in the case of Dweller) would seem to suggest they might be some form of intelligence designed to be capable of employing various unusual mediums as hardware bases. However, there are several factors opposing such a theory, chief among them the fact that the guises controlled by each entity at any given time do not emit or receive any sort of signal directed at each other, indicating that they cannot be virtually connected by conventional means; additionally, they are only able to interface with each other if at least one (or a section) of their physical forms is located at a specialised terminal, referred to as Nexus, of which there exist several throughout the Cortex and the subterranean network below, alongside a section of their communication's intended recipient. The apparent absence of anything that may resemble a personality or individual psychological profile in any of the beings, and the fundamentally mechanical nature of their actions ad cognitive processes, might contest the theory that they are sapient, or even sentient individuals, and instead support the view that they are extremely complex, but comparatively unsophisticated constructs; yet this would fail to take into account such things as the Sight's remarkable abilities of unprompted innovation and the lack of regular patterns in its overall activity. Altogether, all that is truly known of these beings is that they are clearly artificial in origin, are capable of advanced cognitive, evaluative, strategic and creative mental activity and do not exist as material entities, instead coordinating the actions and properties of distinct bodies created by themselves.

The most visible of the Manifold Sight's components is Watcher, whose main activity is constructing mechanical drones out of the strangely resilient crystalline formations which abound in the mines around the Axial Conduit and putting them to use patrolling the Cortex and maintaining its few active installations, mining materials for further drones and operating the machinery to assemble them, as well as interacting with outside influences. The drones are typically uniform in shape, having a vaguely triangular body (with the figure being positioned horizontally, the hypotenuse directed towards the ground) supported by seven segmented limbs and possessing an array of antenna-like organs of perception at the front. They can, however, be distinguished by the colour of the crystal variety they are built of (which may be either translucent white, opaque violet or a combination of the two) and their size, which varies depending on their function (smaller maintenance drones can reach a minimum of twenty centimetres, while conveyor or combat drones may be as large as five metres). Specialised drones may possess hybrid features, as mentioned below.

Seeker appears to fulfil the role of main information gatherer within the Sight. It does not possess solid physical bodies like Watcher, but rather propagates its consciousness through an artificially designed noble, gas, mildly toxic to most life-forms, being present wherever a sufficiently large mass of it is gathered. Projecting itself through the gas enables Seeker to perceive its immediate surroundings down to their molecular components, as well as detect vibrations, light and temperature fluctuations. The major disadvantage of this conduit is that Seeker cannot actively control its "body" and must rely on other agents, typically Watcher's drones, to move independently of environment factors. Specialised drone models exist that exploit the gas's refractive nature to improve their visual perception, or are capable of releasing it around themselves.

Sentinel is the Sight's equivalent of a weapon, in the broadest sense of the word. Its material presence is represented by webs of fibrous, rubbery biosynthetic material, interspersed with bulbous cartilaginous clumps, typically found in mounds of viscous ooze scattered throughout the Cortex and its nether regions. However, those are not so much its actual conduit as a form of infrastructure necessary for the latter. Sentinel's consciousness is effectively contained in sequences of chemio-electric luminous impulses coursing through the organic constructs, which function somewhat similarly to a neural system, albeit without synapses. If necessary, Sentinel can project itself outside the webs in the form of potent discharges, which can inflict electric shock and considerable blunt physical trauma even at comparatively large distances, or generate temporary static fields which hamper the motion of physical objects and the propagation of energy. Thus, drones designed for combat by Watcher have Sentinel projector webs embedded in their bodies.

The last member of the Sight, Dweller, remains largely an enigma. Its primary function seems to be preserving an artificial ecosystem situated in the deepest caverns below the Axial Conduit, which apparently simulates conditions akin to those present on an Earth-like world during relatively early stages of the evolution of organic life (comparable to the early Terreneuvian series on Earth). The ecosystem is entirely aquatic, with several submerged chambers being maintained at more or less evenly warm temperature; complex algae are abundant within it, as are pluricellular invertebrate animals of various sorts. Dweller has been known to experiment on the life forms it breeds in subterranean laboratories, afterwards releasing the specimen onto Ezra's surface to test their resilience (none has survived for long thus far) or handing them to Watcher for hybridisation with drones or conduits. It is unknown what Dweller's own physical medium is, but, on the basis of its activities, it can be presumed it is organic, perhaps animal- or plant-like in composition.
[/hider]